


Leave a Bad Taste in Your Mouth

by fits_in_frames



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spn_remix, F/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-17
Updated: 2007-10-17
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1558016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fits_in_frames/pseuds/fits_in_frames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-hunt and post-Cassie, Dean muses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave a Bad Taste in Your Mouth

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Going Without](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/48008) by eloise_bright. 



> _did i disappoint you_  
>  _or leave a bad taste in your mouth_  
>  _you act like you never had love_  
>  _and you want me to go without_  
>  {johnny cash // one}  
> 
> 
> Written for the 2007 [](http://spn-remix.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://spn-remix.livejournal.com/)**spn_remix** challenge. Spoilers for "Route 666".

Dean falls into step a few paces behind his father, cradling his arm instinctively. Dad goes to open the car door for him, but he steps in front and wrenches it open himself. Dad doesn't say a word, goes around the other side of the car. Dean pulls the door closed and props his arm up between the armrest and his thigh.

"You got sloppy," Dad says after a few minutes. No _that looks like it hurts_ or _how's your arm doing_ or even a simple, _you okay_. He closes his eyes and slinks down in his seat, as if he could hide himself from the world. Well, maybe not the world. Maybe just John Winchester.

He still hears the cackles of the ghost in his ears, _cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye_ , and right alongside it are little whispers, little nothings that she--that _Cassie_ , his mind forces him to think--would breathe into his mouth when he kissed her. He hid it pretty well from her, the job, the hunt. He stole the car a few times, picked her up, took her out to coffee, like a normal, everyday human being. They laughed over drinks with names he couldn't pronounce about music he never knew and people he never met.

Sometimes, with the bitter, stale taste of coffee still on his tongue, he would take her to the docks and fuck her, slow and easy, like she was something to be revered, something to be polished and set in an engagement ring. She would pant against his cheek, not-words tumbling out of her like ocean waves under a jewel-toned sky. Afterwards, they would lie with each other in the backseat, his hands around her waist, and they would talk about the house they were going to buy together, the kids they were going to have, the big, friendly dog they would adopt. It felt right, it felt beautiful, it felt infinite.

"You know better than to turn your back," Dad says into the silence, seemingly absently. "Rookie mistake, Dean."

And so yes, maybe he got sloppy. Maybe that was what happened when you met a girl like Cassie, with soft lips and sweet-smelling hair. Maybe he saw what it was like, to be all white picket fences and apple pie and electric bills, and that swimming around in his head made him sloppy.

Or maybe it was the dreams he would have while he was sleeping next to her. He usually doesn't dream, not like normal people, but Cassie would stroke his hairline and kiss his cheek in just the right way before he closed his eyes that all the ghosts and monsters and scary things in his head would just disappear. She would ask him, in the morning, _did you have any good dreams_ and he would say, _yes, but you weren't in them_ , even if she was. He dreamt about flying for the first time with her curled up against his stomach, and he woke up still feeling air beneath his body instead of cotton and rayon.

Or maybe--and he's sure Sam would spew something about Freud and Greek tragedy at this point--it was the way she reminded him of Mom sometimes. The way she brushed her hair, the way she touched her finger to the end of his nose, the way she laughed and called his name while he chased her across a field and eventually tackled her to the ground. Sometimes he would blink and she'd be a different person, not quite Cassie Robinson and not quite Mary Winchester, but someone whose name was on the tip of his tongue, and it tasted like hot dinners and lazy mornings.

"You gotta be prepared, son."

Dean stiffens, partially because his train of thought has been derailed, partially because his arm hurts like a bitch, and partially he needs to keep his mouth shut or he's going to spew off some trivial nothing about Mom that will get him smacked. He wants to punch his father, right in the nose, to relish the blood spilling out of his face. He wants to call Sammy, tell him everything, not because he has to, but because he can. He wants to take back everything with Cassie, every kiss and every glance and every laugh and every hot, sticky night in her bed or the car or in that secluded place behind the high school that she told him she lost her virginity. He wants to erase it, all of it, and replace it with a pretty girl with a pretty mouth that he had sex with a few times. But things don't work like that in the real world, see, and Dad most of all should understand that. Dean thinks he does, underneath everything, but Winchesters don't talk about _feelings_ , and they certainly don't talk about the past.

"I don't know what's gotten into you."

He lifts his head and watches his reflection in the window against the passing nighttime landscape. The ghost beat him up pretty well, for a woman that'd been dead for twenty-some-odd years. Both his eyes have dark, sweeping strokes of purple under them, as if painted on. He's got a cut on his bottom lip, a gash on his right cheekbone, a thin, fresh scar on his left one. He's glad Cassie never saw him like this, like some kind of prize fighter. He'd rather she think he was out of his mind than a monster. He shifts in his seat and winces at the pain in his arm. It's pretty bad, but he's had worse.

Dad switches his hands on the steering wheel so he can put one on Dean's good shoulder. It feels odd and strangely cold. "Look, we'll patch you up, okay? You'll be good as new. Put this all behind you."

"Yeah," Dean mumbles, "okay." He leans his head against the window (there will be an oily and possibly bloody spot there when he sits up, but he doesn't really care) and dozes off. He doesn't dream, but that's okay.


End file.
